


Fracture Point

by leftofrevolution



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Betrayal, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 11:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9655172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftofrevolution/pseuds/leftofrevolution
Summary: Trust needs to be built before it can be broken.





	

_“And you were nervous,” Orson crowed, throwing an arm around Galen’s shoulders and pulling him close. “I told you there was nothing to worry about.”_

_Galen managed a weak smile in return, still feeling a bit nauseated. There was nothing he hated more than public speaking, and even if the crowd had been relatively small, the significance of his presentation had been more than enough to make up for it. “Only because you let me practice on you. Your questions were harder than any the thesis committee asked.”_

_Orson laughed. “All I did was help you calm down. There wasn’t anything they could have thrown at you that would’ve tripped you up. You know your work cold.”_

_For all that Orson downplayed his assistance, Galen had suffered two panic attacks just at the thought of his thesis defense, and he knew that he never would have gotten through it if it hadn’t been for Orson’s several weeks of coaching and reassurance. Galen couldn’t feel very proud of himself anyway, even now that it was over. Difficult to be pleased over a job half done. “What little of it there is. It’s all hypothetical without actual kyber crystals to experiment with.” While a Jedi historian to whom Galen owed his thanks (and his thesis) had uploaded a few computational models of kyber crystals a few centuries back, all of his requests for access to real kyber had been denied, and that wasn’t looking to change any time soon._

_Orson grinned at him, but stayed quiet until everyone else had filed out of the room, remaining behind while Galen gathered up his materials._

_“I got you something.”_

_Galen looked up at him after he shoved the last of his datapad handouts into his bag. “You know I don’t like… fuss.”_

_Orson rolled his eyes. “I know, which is why I’m not making you go out and get drunk tonight to celebrate.” The implication being that they’d stay in and get drunk instead, which Galen was fine with if it was just the two of them alone. Orson at least was usually smart enough these days to order them some food first to help soak up the alcohol. “But you’ll like this.”_

_Galen remained unconvinced for the two seconds it took Orson to pull the necklace out of his pocket, and then he stopped breathing._

_It wasn’t another panic attack; then he felt like he couldn’t get enough air. Now, air just felt unimportant in the face of what Orson was holding, the dangling pendant—slightly smaller than his thumb—that so distinctly reflected the rays of the setting sun. It was without conscious thought that Galen walked closer, holding a hand out but not yet daring to take it. “Is that…”_

_Orson wasn’t still grinning, exactly, but Galen could see the brightness of his eyes. “Doctor Galen Erso, you know very well it is.”_

_It felt almost like sacrilege, to touch it, but Orson continued to look at him expectantly, so Galen grabbed the cord—carefully, so carefully, more so than he had ever handled anything in his life—and held the pendant up to the table lamp for closer inspection. There was no mistaking it; though he had only ever before seen it in holos and pictures, there was nothing else that refracted light quite like kyber. “How did- where did you-”_

_“I murdered a Jedi and took it from his lightsaber,” said Orson, his affect studiously innocuous._

_“No,” said Galen, still distracted, “If you’d done that it would have color-”_

_Orson spent the next minute and a half laughing so hard that he almost asphyxiated himself._

_Besides confirming that he didn’t realistically have a way of acquiring Galen more, Orson never did tell Galen where he got the kyber crystal… and for reasons that forever escaped him, though at first he fully intended to use it in some preliminary experiments, once Galen put the pendant on, he never quite got around to taking it off._

\--*--

It was very, very early in the morning coming up on his third month of imprisonment by Marshal Phara’s forces on Vallt when Galen was awoken by a scrabbling sound right outside of his door.

He had not slept well since he’d been tossed into a prison cell until he ‘came to his senses’ about working for Vallt’s new Separatist regime; however, he _had_ been asleep, and so the meaning of the noise did not fully register in his mind until the door slid open to reveal Orson crouched on the ground by the door panel, swearing quietly under his breath and blowing on his fingers.

“… Orson?”

At that, Orson finally stopped looking down at his hands and glanced up at Galen, holding one of his (visibly burnt) fingers to his lips in a signal for silence even as he grinned, gesturing with his other hand for Galen to follow him.

Galen did so, though he half-felt in a dream. It had been fourteen months since he had last stood in the same room as Orson, the longest they had ever gone without being in each other’s presence since they had first met back at the Futures Program. Their calls by holo had been welcome but infrequent, as Vallt was far enough into the Outer Rim to make communications with anyone near the Core extremely expensive, and then of course King Chai had been overthrown by elements of his government allied with the Separatists and there hadn’t been a chance to make any calls at all. Galen had not entirely given up hope of rescue by Republic forces, but Vallt wasn’t terribly important in the grand scheme of things and he was even less so, so he’d been more or less resigned to wait out the war imprisoned in Vallt. To be rescued at all was thus a surprise; to be rescued by _Orson_ strained credulity. Orson was military, technically, but a Republic architect assigned to a research posting really had no business being anywhere near Separatist-aligned space.

Yet here he was, and not alone. Stationed on either side of the door as Galen walked out were two people dressed as prison security guards, but Galen did not recognize them and they flanked him and Orson as they strode down the hallway, Galen’s cell door closing in their wake. Orson, for his part, was wearing indistinct dark clothing that took Galen nearly a minute to recognize as the uniform of the security complex’s maintenance team.

Galen felt like they should have encountered someone, anyone, as they made their way out of the facility, but the surreal air of the whole thing continued; the corridors seemed deserted, even as Orson confidently led their small party down several flights of stairs to what Galen uncertainly identified as a maintenance entrance. The door was already open but led out onto a deserted alleyway, and it was one of their two ‘guards’—a female Gotal—who glanced around outside before gesturing the all-clear, their other guard—an impressively built dark-skinned male human—reaching into the alleyway dumpster and pulling out a duffle bag as they walked by.

It was in another, equally deserted alleyway that the second guard unfastened the duffle bag and tossed Galen a new set of clothing, all three of his rescuers stripping off their shirts (and in the guards’ case, their armor) and the identifying markers on their remaining clothes and throwing them in the garbage while donning Valltii civilian garb, all of this done with a haste that befit stripping outside in what passed for Vallt’s summer (still below freezing). Galen, for his part, didn’t bother removing anything except his now-soaking slippers so he could replace them with snow boots, zipping up his parka over his prison uniform and rubbing his hands together for warmth.

It wasn’t until they were well away from that second alleyway and all evidence of their break out of the security complex that Galen felt comfortable enough to try speaking again, though he didn’t get beyond a repeat of Orson’s name before Orson was pulling him roughly into his arms.

Galen couldn’t help but stiffen at first; Orson was more physically demonstrative than him at the best of times, and it had been months since he had been touched with affection. For that same reason, however, it didn’t take more than a few seconds before he relaxed into the embrace and tentatively returned it, leaning into Orson with a long, drawn out sigh. It… felt good. Orson smelled strongly of burnt plastic and ozone, but he was real, breathing unsteady but strong under Galen’s hands, and the last whispers of Galen’s fears of this being just another fantasy of freedom were dispelled, like smoke on the wind.

Still, Orson released him relatively quickly, though he kept his hands on Galen’s shoulders as he pulled away. “By the Force, it’s good to see you.”

“I believe that’s my line,” Galen replied, feeling a mirror of Orson’s uneven grin quirk his own mouth. “How did you-”

Orson shook his head and finally—reluctantly, his fingers lingering on the cuff of Galen’s parka—broke all points of contact with Galen, taking a step back and glancing around the small thoroughfare (unnecessarily, as their two guards had not been similarly distracted). “Later. We have to go.”

He took another step down the thoroughfare before Galen grabbed him by the sleeve. “Wait. Lyra and Jyn, they’re being held elsewhere-”

“The Keep, yes I know. They’re being retrieved right now, we’ll meet them at the ship.” Orson grinned again. “Simultaneous prison breaks, as it were. Not really enough people to handle things if anyone noticed what we were doing.”

Galen relaxed at this information, but he still didn’t let go of Orson’s sleeve. “In that case, we have to stop by the kyber synthesis facility.” When Orson stared at him in incomprehension, Galen explained, “All of my research is there.”

With anyone else—anyone else, who wouldn’t have understood how much Galen had invested in his life’s work—that likely wouldn’t have been sufficient explanation, but Orson just rolled his eyes and changed course, murmuring under his breath, “How many times have I told you to back up your data, I don’t know. Really, Galen.”

“There were security concerns,” said Galen, slightly offended on his own behalf. “And since the other place the data is being held is a fortress, I thought-”

“Excuse me,” said the female Gotal, politely but with a distinct edge of censure, “I would be extremely appreciative if you would keep the chatter to a minimum while we’re in hostile territory.”

It occurred to Galen around that moment that he had absolutely no idea who these people were; they held themselves professionally enough, but the male human at least did not have a military hairstyle, and the guns they both had holstered under their parkas were not military issue. This may have just meant the Republic had halfway decent infiltrators, except that if this was actually a Republic rescue attempt, there was absolutely no cause for Orson to be here.

Still, Orson seemed comfortable enough with them, just huffing slightly at the remonstrative before they continued on to the kyber synthesis facility. It was also within the city confines of Tambolor, but on the southwest edge versus the prison’s northern location, so it took a good ten minutes of hurried walking before they arrived. It was still dark as Galen led them around to a back door and Orson spent a few minutes fiddling with the door panel, but the kind of blue-gray that heralded the dawn, and Galen didn’t bother restraining a sigh of relief when Orson finally finished hotwiring the door open.

The grin Orson shot at Galen this time was victorious and slightly smug. “And you thought all of that practice sneaking back into our rooms on Brentaal was a waste of my time.”

“It was,” Galen said mildly. “We had a window.”

“And what would’ve been the fun in-”

The female Gotal didn’t even bother with the pretense of civility this time and just slapped a hand over Orson’s mouth as their other guard briefly scouted their entrance before nodding back at them. “Sir,” he said to Galen, much more quietly than either Orson or Galen had managed, “Where is your research located?”

“Up one floor,” Galen whispered back. “Data storage room.”

The data storage room was also where the facility kept their spare memory discs, and between that, the fact that Marshal Phara’s regime hadn’t bothered ordering any of the computer passwords changed since the coup, and it being so early in the morning that absolutely no one was working, the data retrieval began smoothly enough. The download was in fact at ninety-five percent completion by the time the alarms started going off.

It took Galen a second to realize that it was the city sirens and not the facility’s alarm system, but the former was bad enough; the only time Galen had heard them before was at the beginning of the coup. Orson and their two guards looked outright stricken, their two guards making for the door and Orson swearing under his breath before hissing at him, “Galen, grab the memory disc! We have to go _now_.”

“What?” said Galen, though he was already complying; only ninety-six percent completion, but the last few files were some of his older work that he had copies of back on Coruscant and so were not much of a loss. The disc was barely in his hand before Orson was dragging him out of the room, breaking into a dead run the second they were out of the building.

“Orson!” Galen shouted after him, wanting an explanation, but he didn’t have the breath for anything else; Orson had always been faster than him, and their guards were faster still, making straight for the spaceport as the sun just began to peak over the mountains at their backs. Galen could barely keep any of them in his sights, and then only because Orson stopped twice to wait for him to catch up, always taking those moments to scan the sky, looking hunted and still swearing quietly with every exhalation of breath.

Galen only saw their guards again when they made it to the walkway leading up to the entrance of the spaceport, where for the first time since he was broken out of the prison Galen saw people that were not his rescuers or a few single individuals out for an early morning walk: spaceport security, a lot of them, talking to each other near the entrance but at a distance too far away for Galen to hear. Their own guards were waiting impatiently at the corner of a building that hid them from immediate view of the spaceport. They didn’t even look winded, but they took the time for Galen and Orson to catch their breaths before the female Gotal said bluntly to Orson, “Our original plan isn’t going to work.”

“Obviously,” said Orson. “How many stun grenades do you have?”

“Grenades?” said Galen, but everyone ignored him, both of the guards silently pulling out three egg-shaped objects each and holding them out to Orson, who took two from their human guard and said to him, “Your job is to get Galen to the ship alive.” The guard nodded.

“Orson,” said Galen, trying again, “What is-”

Orson shook his head at him. “Not now.”

What happened next transpired very quickly. The congregating spaceport security did, in fact, turn out to have gathered closely enough together for three stun grenades thrown simultaneously to knock most of them flat; that still left four of them upright at the gate entrance, but the confusion caused by the explosions was enough for their guards to shoot them down where they stood upon their approach—Galen could only tell himself that they wouldn’t bother using stun grenades if their blasters weren’t set to stun as well—before they were running again, Galen’s sides burning before they even made it to the gate.

And then there were more guards from- somewhere, and if Galen had thought his three companions were outpacing him before they had apparently been holding back then, except that both the human guard and Orson stopped dead at the first turn in the spaceport, Orson hurling his second grenade over Galen’s left shoulder while further explosions continued ahead of them that Galen could only hope were caused by the Gotal. And then even _more_ running, except it had already become very apparent that Galen had spent the past two months in a prison cell and had never been fast on his feet besides, so for the last fifty meters towards what Galen could only hope was their ship, the guard actually threw Galen over his shoulder and sprinted the rest of the way himself, which was how Galen was in the perfect position to watch Orson get shot.

Orson had been shot before. Four times that Galen knew of, and if anyone could manage to get shot at a research posting it would be Orson, so perhaps more since they had parted ways a little over a year ago. He had also been stabbed (bar fight), burned (lack of proper protective gear while on building sites and, at various times, when hotwiring door panels), gotten his right leg blown off below the knee (landmine), and been punched (in the face, and elsewhere) more times than Galen could count. The worst Galen had ever personally witnessed was the punching, and that had been bad enough. Taking care of Orson in the aftermath of his more severe injuries had been worse.

None of that could compare to this, every atom in his body freezing in horror as he watched Orson stagger, begin to fall-

“ _Orson_!” He wasn’t even aware that he was struggling to get out of the guard’s arms before he was thrown bodily on the ship’s ramp and was shoved back off his feet when he tried to rise. “ _You_ -!”

But then Orson was there, nearly dropping to his knees on the edge of the ramp before he was pulled up the rest of the way by yet another person Galen didn’t know—this time a sea-green Barabel—pale and shaking but very much alive. “For the love of the Force, Galen, calm down.” For all of the rebuke implied in his words, Orson was grinning madly at him, and Galen almost started to tentatively grin back—to acknowledge that somehow they’d all made it through that ill-conceived rush in one piece—before he glanced out of the closing ramp as they rose into the sky and saw the fleet of Republic cruisers.

“What is…” he glanced at Orson as he spoke, and his question died on his tongue. Orson looked slightly grim, his left hand pressed to the exit wound in his right shoulder, but he did not look surprised. “Orson, what is going on?”

“They’re early,” said Orson, which was not an explanation, but paused to hiss as the Barabel returned with a pair of scissors and began cutting away Orson’s parka and shirt around the blaster burn. “Would you believe this is almost exactly where I was shot back on Christophsis? What are the chances-”

Galen was getting extremely tired of being rebuffed. “Orson! Why bother going through all of this if the Republic was going to liberate Vallt today anyway?”

“Because they aren’t here to liberate it, you jackass,” said Orson shortly, wincing as the Barabel swiped a wet cloth over the burn and injected something into his right shoulder. “Vallt wasn’t taken over by the Seps; they switched sides. They’re traitors. The Republic is here to blast Tambolor back to antiquity.”

Galen managed to push himself to his feet this time without anyone stopping him, and he staggered over to a viewport, just in time to catch sight of the Republic cruisers begin to rain down fire on Vallt’s capital before their ship pulled out of the atmosphere.

“No…”

Galen startled and turned to see his wife at the door leading from the loading room to the main hold, staring out the other viewport. She was crying. “Lyra…”

She turned to him, her eyes still shining. “They’re going to start with the Keep, Galen. Rooni, Tambo, Nurboo, Easel… they’re all being kept there.” Galen nearly twitched guiltily; he had all but forgotten about his Zerpen Industries coworkers, who due to their local origins and cooperative behavior had been kept in the relative luxury of the Keep versus Galen’s prison cell. Lyra didn’t notice his expression, having already turned towards Orson, still on the floor. “How could they do this? Most of the city’s populace has no interest in this war!”

“Even if I cared,” said Orson, his lips thin, not wincing this time as the Barabel shot another injection into his shoulder, “I found out about this operation a week ago. I barely had time to scrap together something to get the three of _you_ out; I wasn’t going to waste any of it trying to interpret the motivations of Republic High Command.” He stared at Lyra pointedly. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

Lyra didn’t answer, her gaze already back on the viewport, for all that they had now left Tambolor far behind them.

Galen wanted to comfort her. He did; he hadn’t seen his wife since they were separated shortly after the coup, and he had missed her desperately every day he spent wasting away in his cell. Except it was that moment the full weight of the past few hours finally came crashing down upon him, and he sank back down to the deck, wrapping his arms around himself. Breathe. He had to breathe; they were off Vallt, he was out of his cell, never mind the fact that he’d been broken out, and been shot at, and Orson had been actually shot, and the city he’d called his home for over a year was being reduced to ashes underneath his feet-

“Galen?” His wife’s voice, but strangely distant. Someone was crouching by him, holding him by the face; he flinched away. He couldn’t breathe. “Galen, what is-?”

“Get your hands off him,” barked Orson. “Can’t you see he’s having a panic attack?” _Too harsh, Orson_ , Galen might have said, under normal circumstances, but at the moment he was thankful for it, Lyra’s touch withdrawing with alacrity. Not far enough; he could still feel her next to him, but… better. There was room enough for air now, at least.

“What are you talking about, Orson?”

Orson ignored her, meeting Galen’s gaze from across the deck. “Galen, you’re fine. We’re all fine. Your child is asleep up on the bridge, Lyra is here, I’m here, only slightly singed-”

“You should really be in the medbay, sir-”

A dismissive gesture from Orson with his left hand, seemingly unbothered by his right dangling unresponsively at his side. “Anyway, we’re going to enter hyperspace in a minute-” The ship shuddered faintly around them. “Or now, I suppose. We’re home free, alright? So you can just sit there and breathe for a while, and then maybe have breakfast, and we’ll be back in Republic-controlled space before you know it.”

So Galen did, watching through his breathing exercises as the Barabel pulled Orson to his feet, Orson only wavering slightly as he was guided out of the room, presumably towards the medbay. The tight feeling in his chest had almost subsided entirely by the time Lyra—now seated next to him on the deck—said quietly, “So this has happened before?”

“… Occasionally,” said Galen, trying to smile and failing. He still felt a little cold, even with the heat radiating from the deck.

“I’ve never seen you like this before,” said Lyra. _But Orson has_ , went unspoken, but not unheard.

“You are significantly less stressful than Orson,” said Galen, managing a real smile this time.

Both of them stared out the opposite viewport into the bright lines of hyperspace for a while, blissfully quiet. Nothing unexpected out there. Just the unreality of a place beyond space and time. It was nearly calming.

After a few minutes, Lyra stirred. “Can I touch you now?”

In response, Galen reached over and entangled his fingers with hers. If he still wasn’t breathing as evenly as he would like, well… that was alright. Or it would be.

\--*--

“So they’re mercenaries,” Galen said, flatly.

It had turned out that the ship they were on was not so well equipped as to have a bacta tank, or even a ready supply of bacta strips. Orson was therefore making due with a large amount of antibiotics and painkillers after the Barabel—Hakkaad, but Galen rather hoped to never meet any of the mercenaries again so wasn’t putting forth much effort to learn their names—had cleaned the charred remnants of Orson’s clothing out of his injury. There was also a sling and some bandages, but Orson forgot himself enough that the sling’s efforts to keep the strain off his shoulder proved largely futile. Not that Orson could do much anyway; while his right shoulder had healed fairly well after being shot the first time, there had still been a significant amount of residual scar tissue, and the accumulated damage combined with the painkillers meant he was restricted to doing everything with his left hand for the foreseeable future.

Galen would have felt bad about the whole thing—should have, really—but Orson had a way about him that made sympathy feel more like an attempt at punishing him than his due. He was also being rather blasé about Galen’s justifiable concerns, so any sympathy was quickly being drowned out by irritation. “Yes, Galen, they’re mercenaries. This is in fact a mercenary ship.”

Galen didn’t let the condescension in Orson’s voice deter him. “Why are there mercenaries, Orson?”

“Because the Republic refused my petition to stage a rescue attempt for you,” Orson said patiently. Galen stared at him. “What?”

“Are you telling me that all of… this,” Galen hoped his gesture was enough all-encompassing, “Was completely unsanctioned?”

Orson made a valiant but ultimately failed attempt to shrug. “I requested leave immediately after I found out about the mission to raze Tambolor; since my request was approved, I’d like to think that my superiors were _unofficially_ sanctioning of… er…”

“You spending your impromptu vacation hiring a team of mercenaries to enter Separatist-controlled space and recover a civilian family of no value whatsoever from a city the Republic was about to bomb into rubble.” Galen stared pointedly at Orson’s shoulder. “And getting shot.”

“How I spend my leave time is my own business,” said Orson airily, though his eyes were wary. “Also, you and I have very different definitions of ‘no value.’”

“No value to the _Republic_ ,” Galen qualified, not in a mood to argue with Orson about semantics. “This is the sort of thing that gets your court-martialed, Orson.”

“Says the civilian,” said Orson. “And even if I was…” he trailed off.

“What is it _now_?” said Galen.

Orson shook his head as if to clear it. “Sorry, I was just remembering that the Valltii government seized all of your assets, you’re out of a job, both of our leases on Coruscant lapsed over a year ago, and I just spent the vast majority of my savings hiring a mercenary team to rescue you. So if I do get thrown in prison or dishonorably discharged, we may be a _little_ fucked.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Well,” said Galen, trying for humor, “Worse comes to worse, my parents left me their farm on Grange, and I never got around to selling it. We could always-” Orson was shaking his head again. “What?”

“The Separatists started sieging Grange over a month ago,” said Orson, halfway apologetic. “We couldn’t go there even if we wanted to. Which we don’t. It’s a horrible backwater and you hate farming.”

“I don’t _hate_ farming,” said Galen, reflexively defensive even as he sank down to sit on Orson’s cot. Orson’s room on the ship was more or less a closet, but it was the only place they could speak privately, Lyra and Jyn occupying the only other room not overrun by mercenaries. He was glad for the privacy now. He had always had… mixed feelings on Grange, especially since his parents had died. It had been boring and he’d had nothing in common with his classmates, but it was still the place his parents had loved, where they were buried. And now it, too, had been ruined by this war, like so much else had been.

After a moment, Orson sat down next to him. It was mostly an effort to distract himself that Galen asked, lightly, “So where are we headed, anyway?”

“Corellia. Where I hired them.”

Galen did some quick mental math. He had no idea where Orson was stationed, but based on the travel distance between Corellia and Vallt alone… “Your leave request must have been granted very quickly.”

Orson leaned his head back against the bulkhead and closed his eyes. “As I said: _unofficial_ sanctioning. Probably.”

“So that leaves three more days on this ship.” Orson nodded. “Plus however long it will take you to get back to your posting, which has to be less than two days.” Another nod. “How much leave time did you request?”

“I had two weeks saved up. Which gives me a little over a day to find a decent clinic on Corellia and buy some bacta strips before heading back to my posting. My shoulder should be… mostly… healed by the time I get back, giving my superiors plenty of plausible deniability as to how I spent my leave.”

“Should this all have _actually_ been unofficially sanctioned,” said Galen, dryly, “as your still won’t have full use of your right arm,” if Orson ever did; over four days without bacta as likely as not meant that the scarring would already be too pervasive for bacta treatments to be effective, “and my family and I will mysteriously have escaped Tambolor right before the Republic fleet destroyed it.” With no money, or at least not a lot. The new regime had indeed seized his house and all of his wages from Verpen Industries, and while that left his savings from his position at the Institute, Coruscant was the most expensive planet in the galaxy. His family could live on the savings for a year, maybe, until he or Lyra found work—the Institute unfortunately not an option, it having already filled his old position—but Galen had none of his identification with him, so he wouldn’t be able to access any of it until he got back to Coruscant. Somehow. With no money.

He glanced sideways at Orson. “How much funds do you have left, exactly?”

Orson didn’t even bother opening his eyes. “I can give you five-thousand credits to tide you over until you and Lyra have your identification sorted out.”

“… I will pay you back immediately, of course.” Galen nearly asked how much it had cost Orson to hire the mercenaries; in a just world, he owed Orson that much, and realistically far more than that. But he had a feeling that the number was higher than he could actually afford to pay, so instead he remained silent, hating himself a little for it.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Orson-”

“Look, either my superiors won’t care and I’ll continue to have free military housing at my posting, or I’ll be in prison, or I’ll be dishonorably discharged. Only in the last scenario will I actually need credits, in which case I have enough to get to Coruscant and I’ll come crash on your couch. You can pay me back once you have work again.”

Galen didn’t say anything, and it was only then that Orson finally cracked an eye open and looked at Galen. “Are you angry at me?”

Galen was startled. “Of course not.”

“You sounded angry earlier. When I told you that your rescue wasn’t sanctioned.” Orson’s voice was airy again, which was how Galen knew he was anxious and trying to hide it.

Orson had always been the tactile one in their relationship, as clearly demonstrated during their reunion on Vallt; he found touch reassuring as Galen rarely did, which was why Galen gave into some of the exhaustion that had built up during his imprisonment and not entirely dissipated after a full night’s rest on the ship and let his right shoulder slip to bump against Orson’s left. “I worry about you. It’s different.”

Orson relaxed a little, leaning into Galen. “Well, either everything will be fine, or I’ll finally get out of the military like you always wanted.”

“I didn’t picture it quite this way,” said Galen, dry again.

“Details.”

\--*--

Galen made it back to Coruscant with Lyra and Jyn, none of them worse for wear for their travails. Just as fortunately, Orson wasn’t court-martialed or even officially reprimanded; if Galen felt uneasy about the dark stain of a bruise that graced Orson’s cheekbone the next time they managed a holocall ten days after their separation on Corellia, there wasn’t anything he could do about it, and Orson seemed unbothered, dismissing it as inconsequential when Galen dared to ask after a few minutes of trivialities.

It was at the very end of their conversation that Orson mentioned, “If you still haven’t found work, I know of a position you’d be perfect for.”

As Galen had finished settling into Coruscant less than a week ago, Orson knew very well that he hadn’t. Orson also sounded like he was trying too hard to be casual, which was how Galen knew, “It’s a military position.”

“Civilian contracting,” Orson corrected, but didn’t otherwise deny it. “I showed them the copy of the kyber crystal data you gave me. They found it very intriguing and thought it might eventually tie itself well to some of our projects. We’d even be working together some of the time.”

The fact that Orson had managed to avoid a court-martial despite obviously giving his superiors only the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability was nothing short of astounding, but then, Orson had always had a way with people that Galen had never managed to match. “What would they have me be doing?”

“Just continuing the research you began on Vallt.” Orson grinned, faintly. “The Republic is just as interested in new forms of energy as Zerpen Industries. More, probably; it’s just less willing to invest in unproven technologies. You’ve done enough now to get them interested.”

Galen said nothing for a moment, before admitting, “It’s tempting.” And it was; he’d loved his work on Vallt, and the only thing missing from it had been Orson’s presence, his brilliance that played so well off of Galen’s own. This would give him everything he wanted. Except…

“Except you’re going to say no anyway.”

Galen sighed and looked away, not quite able to face Orson’s disappointment. “I cannot in good conscience take funding from the military.”

“It’s the same work!”

Galen didn’t flinch at the rise of Orson’s voice; Orson never reacted well when frustrated, especially when he was trying and failing to hide it. “But used for different ends, Orson.”

Even through the holocall, Galen could see Orson’s eyes narrow. “What ends are you objecting to, exactly? Because Zerpen Industries was planning on using its source of synthetic kyber crystals primarily to better compete with Kuat Drive Yards; mostly with civilian ships, admittedly, but a few military designs as well. They had some other ideas about cheaper sources of power for isolated communities, but it was all to increase their own profits. They aren’t a charity, Galen; they weren’t planning on sharing your research, and the only reason you were able to yourself is because they broke your contract when they failed to rescue you when you were imprisoned on Vallt.

“This military work I’m doing? The work you think of so badly? We’re trying to end the war. The war that has claimed the lives of over four billion sentient beings, that has devastated the Jedi ranks so that they are a fraction of what they were two years ago. The war that’s ravaged _your_ home world.”

Orson wasn’t wrong. But Galen couldn’t ignore the feeling of lead in his stomach at the thought of what answering to Republic interests might mean for him and his work. The uncertainty that he always felt when it came to determining what, exactly, Republic interests even _were_. “I’m sorry.”

Orson looked away. “You always are.” Before Galen could think of something—anything—to say to that, Orson ended the call. And that was the last time Galen saw his friend for five months.

\--*--

Galen hadn’t known exactly what to expect from the Brentaal Futures Program reunion, but it wasn’t Dagio Belcoze throwing a punch at him less than half an hour after he had arrived.

He and Dagio had never gotten along terribly well; they had shared only a few classes at the Futures Program, Dagio’s focus being computer engineering while Galen hadn’t really concentrated on any one field of study until he began his graduate program, but Dagio had been known to pronounce on more than one occasion while drunk that he thought Galen was the most arrogant being he had ever met. Galen had (first privately, later not so privately) thought this opinion was due more to the fact that Galen hadn’t even really cared much about computer engineering yet had always received the top grade in every class they shared than because of anything Galen had ever said to Dagio. Admittedly Dagio had never tried to punch him before, but then Galen had never bothered attending a Program reunion before either; it was a day for firsts.

The worst thing hadn’t been being called a collaborator; it hadn’t even been the punch. It had been the fact that no one had contradicted Dagio once he was well into his cups and started ranting less than thirty centimeters from the tip of Galen’s nose. He had glanced around for potential allies the moment Dagio got started and got nothing but a sea of impassive faces, a few of them even nodding along as Dagio hissed about his lack of patriotism. It didn’t take Galen long to realize that he couldn’t even see anyone who wasn’t either working for the military directly or at the least involved in wartime research.

He was only half paying attention to Dagio’s words when the Iktotchi spit something pejorative about Galen’s bravery or lack thereof—he had gotten very good at ignoring insults thrown in his direction lately—which was apparently infuriating enough to Dagio that Galen found himself seconds later shoved up against the nearest wall, Dagio’s hand gripping tight to the front of his shirt, the smell of second-rate gin on Dagio’s breath making Galen wince as Dagio hissed in his ear, “You’re exactly the sort of amoral bastard who would work for the Separatists if it suited you, Erso. How long have you been reporting to them, eh? Since Vallt? Before then?”

It was uncomfortable, but Galen forced himself to meet Dagio’s eyes as he said lightly, “I’m sorry to see that you still think fervor can cover up for incompetence, Dagio. I would have thought you’d grown up a little since the Program; I suppose you still haven’t learned how to code worth a damn yet?”

In retrospect, he really shouldn’t have been surprised when Dagio pulled back his fist to punch him. The fact that someone grabbed Dagio by the elbow and pulled him off Galen before the Iktotchi actually managed to hit him was really the most unexpected thing to happen yet that evening, considering the mood of the room.

The fact that his savior was _Orson_ was even more startling; Orson hadn’t sent him so much as a basic communique in nearly half a year, and Galen knew basically nothing about Orson’s posting but did know that it wasn’t on Coruscant. Galen also knew that Orson had little to no leave time saved up and wouldn’t waste it on attending a Futures Program reunion besides, so seeing his friend—in full dress uniform, no less—jerk Dagio off-balance and then shove him in the direction of the crowd was enough to leave Galen momentarily stunned.

Orson did not seem similarly afflicted, smiling affably at Dagio in a way that had always portended violence back when they were in school. However, Orson, unlike apparently Dagio, had at least matured slightly since graduating from the Program, so instead of breaking Dagio’s nose like Galen might have expected of him ten years ago, Orson folded his hands behind his back and said mildly, “I can’t believe you tried to start a drunken brawl without me, Dagio. My feelings are hurt. Does our history of me sneaking you terrible rum every day of our Pattern Recognition course mean nothing to you?”

It was typical, Galen thought, for Orson to have talked his way into an advanced engineering class for which he had taken none of the prerequisites then spend the entirety of the seminar drinking. Despite Orson’s occasional tendency for self-sabotage, however, Orson had shared Galen’s predilection towards habitually being the best student in any given class he took and Pattern Recognition, to Galen’s recollection, had been no different in that regard. Except when it came to Orson people never seemed to remember that he had beaten them all out for top honors, or at the least they seemed to have an easier time forgiving him for it. Orson’s easy way with people still didn’t explain how a memory of smuggled, inferior rum was apparently endearing enough to break the tension of the room—at least a fifth of the people in attendance grinned—but Galen was not about to question it. Even Dagio relaxed a little, though the glare he shot at Galen was murderous. “Why you’re still wasting time with this traitor, Orson, I’ll never know.”

“Ah well,” said Orson, still mild, though Galen from behind him could see his fingers twitch, “We all have our foibles.”

Not once during that exchange did Orson look at Galen, keeping his eyes trained steadily on Dagio until the Iktotchi turned away with a grumble. It was only then his gaze flickered over to Galen, jerking his head in the direction of the exit before turning in that direction and walking away, grabbing a small shopping bag off a nearby table as he did so. Galen felt like on principle that he shouldn’t follow, but at the moment he couldn’t think of what that principle might be, and while most of the eyes in the room were off him now, there were enough that remained to make his skin crawl. It was therefore after only a second or two of hesitation that Galen pursued Orson towards the bank of turbolifts that ran the height of the 500 Republica building. They stood in silence for about half a minute before the lift arrived, and Galen was surprised to see Orson press the button for the roof instead of for the first floor.

At Galen’s questioning look, Orson gestured out the elevator’s window. “The Program’s alumni association rented an entire floor of this building, we might as well take advantage of the view.” He patted the bag he carried with his free hand. “The association did not, however, bother to purchase decent liquor to go along with the grandeur of the location. My lateness must thus be excused by necessity; I know how much you hate drinking your brandy watered down.” He said it as though Galen should have been expecting him.

Galen had not. “Why are you here, Orson?”

Sometimes, in his more reflective moments, Galen wondered if he said things deliberately meant to cut Orson because it was a power he otherwise lacked; he didn’t have Orson’s intuitive sense with people, and so rarely knew what to say to make them react in the way he wanted. Only with Orson and Lyra did he understand enough of their individual characters to have some hope of predicting their behavior, but while he used that understanding with Lyra mostly to try and make her happy, there was an ugly pettiness that rose within him when he was angry at Orson that he would be hard pressed, if pushed, to adequately explain. The fact that he felt it at all was bad enough; that he occasionally acted on the feeling was worse.

It wasn’t as if he had to even work at it with Orson to get the results he wanted. As Lyra had said to him, once they had made up from some minor disagreement that had blown all out of proportion, it was actually extremely easy to hurt the people who loved you. The skill was, in Galen’s opinion, in making them love you to begin with, but with Orson he didn’t even know what he had done. Somehow Orson’s explanations never satisfied. Being himself had never been enough for anyone else; even Lyra, really, who sometimes still looked at him like she wasn’t entirely sure what she was seeing. Like there was a chance that what she loved in him had never actually been there at all.

Galen wondered what it said about him that the only person he ever set out to hurt was the only person who would forgive him for it. It was amazing how those thoughts never stopped him in the moment, how it still gave him some small rush of power to see Orson flinch away from him.

Still, Orson covered well, for all that Galen knew all of his tells. His eyes always looked flat when he was unhappy. “On Coruscant, or at this party specifically?”

“Both.”

The turbolift doors opened up, but this time Orson wasn’t the first to step through, watching Galen. He smiled when Galen looked back at him, but carefully, gesturing forward with his left hand for Galen to precede him.

 _He doesn’t trust me not to leave_ , thought Galen; that rush of power again, that at least for a moment Orson doubted Galen would follow wherever he led. But now that his initial resurgence of anger over Orson’s long silence had faded, it didn’t last, and Galen was left with nothing but regrets, as always. It almost hurt to see the way Orson’s eyes brightened when Galen smiled back, and before his face gave something unfortunate away, Galen walked past Orson onto the courtyard that decorated 500 Republica’s roof, making a show of looking around. The roof was otherwise deserted, and while Galen wasn’t well-versed in horticulture, even he could appreciate the skill with which the courtyard’s plants had been sculpted. The view was also excellent, made even more so by the setting of the sun over the horizon and only slightly pockmarked by the recent battle with the Separatists, but that Galen had expected; 500 Republica was not the most exclusive residential tower on Coruscant for nothing.

“Anyway,” said Orson behind him, with a studied nonchalance that at least meant he had gotten his expression back under control, “In the wake of the destruction of much of Coruscant’s infrastructure caused by the attack last month, I have been selected to lead the rebuilding efforts.” When Galen looked at him, Orson’s mouth quirked. “I am still a member of the Engineering Corps, after all.”

“They won’t miss you at your posting?”

Orson carefully set down the bag he was carrying on a bench table and pulled out a bottle of Jogan fruit brandy and two glasses, pouring out a generous amount of liquid in each before holding one out to Galen. “Not especially.” He gave a one-shoulder shrug. “In the wake of Count Dooku’s death, the urgency of our work decreased considerably, and it was thought I would be more help to the Republic at present restoring what was lost instead of- well, other things.”

Galen took the offered glass carefully, swirling it around as he examined the color. It was a nice brandy. If, in fact, he had seen the label correctly, this was far nicer than any alcohol Galen had ever tasted, including at his own wedding. He raised an eyebrow at Orson but otherwise didn’t comment, bringing the glass to his lips and taking a small sip, his eyebrows raising even further as he did. He was relatively unversed in quality spirits, but even he could taste the depth of flavor, the spicy aftertaste that lingered pleasantly on his tongue. For a moment, he actually forgot what he was about to say. “That… um…”

Orson grinned at him. “You can take the bottle home with you if you like.”

“Have a shelf of this sitting in your liquor cabinet such that you can spare one, do you?” Galen quipped, closing his eyes briefly as he took in another mouthful.

Orson barked out a laugh and took a sip of his own, looking nearly as pleased with the taste as Galen. “If that’s what you think, you would be wildly disappointed if I told you my salary. They are providing me with free housing while I am on assignment here, though, so I have at least a few credits to throw around.”

“It was remiss of me not to congratulate you immediately,” said Galen softly. “I may still know very little about the military’s command structure, but it seems to me that for a relatively junior officer to take point on the restoration of the Republic’s capital, someone important must hold your work in very high regard.”

“Well, you weren’t the only one who won a few awards back in school, Galen,” said Orson. It would have been an excellent attempt at brushing off the compliment were Orson’s skin not so fair; Galen could see him blushing even as he looked away, making a show of taking in the view as Galen had earlier.

Galen gave his friend a moment to collect himself—Orson’s pride was occasionally a strangely delicate thing—before saying, “You never did tell me why you were at this reunion.”

“I should think it would be obvious,” said Orson, still not facing him directly.

“… Networking?” Galen hazarded. He had never learned how to do it properly himself, but the Futures Program graduates made up of the best and brightest of the Republic who had grown up outside the Core, and as Orson’s earlier efforts to smooth things over had shown, he had done a much better job of making friends and allies in the Program than Galen.

Orson actually snorted into his drink. “No.” When Galen continued to stare at him quizzically, Orson turned back to him with an exasperated sigh. “To see you, of course.”

“… You were banking on me attending a party.”

At this, Orson actually rolled his eyes. “No. You told the alumni committee you were coming.”

“Ah.” That _did_ make more sense, but “And why did you…”

Orson sighed again. “Sometimes I swear you just like making things more difficult for me.” There was no good way to reply to that, so Galen just took another sip of his brandy as Orson visibly collected himself before saying, “I wanted to apologize. I knew there was no chance you would take military funding, so it was nonsensical of me to be upset with you for refusing my offer. It just seemed…” Orson gave another one-shouldered shrug, “So perfect, I suppose. You didn’t have a job yet, and we could have been working together on projects that combined our passions.” Orson grinned faintly. “If only your damned principles wouldn’t get in the way.”

Galen stared down into his brandy.  “And you needed to wait five months to tell me this? When I had no way of contacting you at your posting.”

“… Well, as I said, I _was_ upset, for a week or two. And then I felt stupid for being angry with you for so long, and by the time I was done feeling stupid, over a month had passed and it felt… insufficient, to apologize via holocall.”

“Sometimes you are a complete idiot, Orson.” When he glanced up, Orson had the temerity to look offended, so Galen continued, “What would have happened, then, had you not been temporarily reassigned to Coruscant? What if you spent the next decade off… wherever you were? Would I have lost you entirely because you couldn’t get over some mild awkwardness long enough to call me? We’ve had arguments in the past, but I hardly remember them now because we were always speaking again within a day or two. Your silence hurt me far worse than your censure ever could.”

Orson blinked. “I-”

“How many friends do you think I have, exactly? How do you think it’s been for me since I returned here? A pacifist on a world constantly applauding the gloriousness of war. Do you think what happened downstairs with Dagio was the first time that happened? The assault was new, certainly, but I’ve been questioned _twice_ by Republic Intelligence and COMPOR because Zerpen Industries has taken to profiteering off both sides of the war, I’ve been prohibited from traveling off Coruscant until further notice, and very few of my former colleagues are even willing to be civil when we happen to run across each other. Only Professor Demesne would even _talk_ to me once word of the questioning got out and I made it clear I did not want to work for the government, and she wouldn’t risk her reputation to the point of doing so in public. She certainly wasn’t willing to _work_ with me, or help me find funding to continue my research. It even spread to Lyra; she took Jyn off to Roon three weeks ago to join a geology expedition just to escape the recriminations for a time.

“And you weren’t there. You saved me from the Separatists on Vallt just to abandon me to the wolves. For once in my life I actually _needed_ you to defend me, to at least be there to reassure me that their words and disdain were inconsequential, and instead… instead it was _your_ words, _your_ disdain I had to remember every time someone I thought was a friend turned away from me in the street.

“And now you’re telling me that you didn’t contact me for five months because you were _embarrassed_?”

Orson stared at him, lips slightly parted. “I…” he glanced away. “I had no idea it would be that bad. I thought you might be drafted, but-”

Galen blinked, derailed despite himself. “Drafted?”

“Well, yes. Practically every scientist and engineer of note has been.” Galen thought back to the room full of Program alumni; he could not recall a single one present who wasn’t now affiliated in some small way with the government, many of whom, in retrospect, had not been before the war began. “Once you had returned to Coruscant, I thought it was only a matter of time-”

“Is that why you made me that offer?”

Orson’s lips thinned. “I wanted to work with you.” It was only half an answer, and both of them knew it.

Galen sat down heavily on the bench. “If you were trying to recruit me before someone else did, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t figure out how to phrase it without making it sound like a threat, and you’ve historically responded terribly to those.” Orson sipped at his brandy. “I suppose it’s not surprising the government didn’t bother with you; you’re a known conscientious objector, and it would be a waste of their time and resources to try. It’s irrelevant now, anyway. With Dooku dead, there is no point in drafting any more scientists. The war will be over in months.”

“So you hadn’t needed me after all, for your work.”

Orson sat down opposite Galen, refilling both of their glasses out of the bottle. “I wouldn’t say that. It’s still ongoing even if some of it is no longer top priority, and a few of our projects are pipe dreams without dealing with the massive energy expenditures required- anyway, my _point_ is that ignorance is no excuse, and this brandy isn’t nearly expensive enough.”

“Your apology brandy.”

Orson shrugged again, still oddly lopsided. “It was recommended, but now I feel like I should have also brought some of that ridiculous sparkling wine Lyra likes, even if she _did_ also abandon you-”

“I was not about to insist my family continue to go through this nonsense just because I am not allowed offplanet. Your shoulder didn’t heal right, did it.”

Orson didn’t bother denying it. “Well, I did go over four days without bacta.” Then he snorted. “Don’t make that face at me; I’m not actually crippled.” He waved the fingers of his right hand at Galen to prove it. “It just isn’t very fun changing my shirt anymore, and apparently even that should get better if I start bothering with my stretching exercises.”

Galen took a long draw out of his glass, deciding privately to forgive Orson even if he was going to let him squirm for a little longer. There was a lot he found he could absolve of someone who had been shot on his and his family’s behalf, even if Orson tended to treat severe bodily injury with less seriousness than he did an overcooked steak at a restaurant. “Your body is nearly as much of a disaster as you are by this point.”

“Says the man without a job.” The words had no bite to them, but something in Galen’s expression must have changed again, because Orson winced. “I shouldn’t have said that. But that _is_ one problem I can fix for you.”

“I won’t work-”

Orson waved away Galen’s refusal. “Yes, yes, I _know_. This isn’t a government job, military or otherwise. But I have some contacts at Helical HyperCom, and they’re looking for someone to produce crystal communications arrays on Lokori. It’s totally beneath you, but HH has an impeccable reputation within the Republic, and a contract with them would at least allow you to get off Coruscant until the war is over. You’re lucky I love you; I was tempted to not even bring it up just so we could spend more than five minutes in each other’s company for once, but I can’t do that to you if Coruscant has truly become such a cesspool that even the scientific community would turn its own. HH has already said they’d take you if I give you a recommendation.”

That was honestly one of the best pieces of news Galen had been given in months—Galen had discovered during his time in prison on Vallt that he dealt terribly with having nothing to do, and it was worse on Coruscant where the inactivity felt more of his own making—but “I can’t leave-”

“The contract wouldn’t start until the beginning of next month. Lyra’s expedition can’t be _that_ long.”

It could be and it had, in the past, but fortunately, “She and Jyn will be back in two weeks.”

“So will you-”

“Of course.” He said it, perhaps, a little too quickly, but he was a hair’s breadth from loathing the very sight of Coruscant’s skyline, and he longed for distance desperately.

“Well then.” Orson touched his glass solemnly to Galen’s. “To people getting over themselves.” The self-deprecating glint in his eye made it clear he was aware of the irony.

Galen nodded solemnly in return. “To having slightly more than five minutes to spend together before I leave; once I return,” and it was a promise, one Galen meant to keep, “I am fully confident you will have made Coruscant the shining jewel of the Republic once again.”

Orson shuddered theatrically. “I’ve been to Lokori; trust me, once you’ve seen it, you won’t want to stay away _that_ long.”

For the first time in over a month, Galen laughed.

\--*--

Orson wasn’t wrong, but not for the reasons he’d thought. Galen’s immediate superior at Helical HyperCom was an incompetent who thought too well of himself, but Galen was so glad to be working again and away from Coruscant that even that couldn’t do much to dampen his happiness. The problem was that within seven weeks of Galen and his family’s arrival, the Separatists decided to make Lokori the focus of some of the civilian raids they occasionally liked to conduct to terrorize the Republic’s civilian populace.

Orson called him after the first and insisted on buying Galen and his family passage back to Coruscant, even offering to put them up until they found housing again, but Galen refused, the thought of returning to Coruscant after not even two months away making something tighten in his chest. The raids were easy to dismiss at first; he, Lyra, and Jyn lived in one of the better protected parts of Fullcalpa, and usually Separatists did not bother committing many resources to low-priority planets like Lokori. However, the scale of the attacks escalated over time, and though the Republic formed a blockade in response, soon passage offplanet ceased to be an option completely, most ships leaving Lokori’s atmosphere being destroyed by Separatist forces before they could make it into hyperspace.

Three months after Galen arrived on Lokori, the Separatists stopped toying with them, and ships began to fall from the sky.

\--*--

There had been nearly no bloodshed during the coup at Vallt; Marshal Phara had not even bothered to execute the old king. The sight that beheld Galen’s eyes the afternoon of the last day of the war more resembled Tambolor’s annihilation, but even then the effect was different. The Republic had not cared about preserving Tambolor’s infrastructure and just incinerated everything from low orbit; the Separatists seemed to want to be slightly more surgical, but Galen could see the explosions in the atmosphere even from his terrace. Few of the ships’ remains actually landed on Fullcalpa, but enough did to cause panic.

Not in Galen; he knew Separatist tactics, and they didn’t tend towards massacres. His fear only started to overtake him when the Separatist Troop Transport ships landed and the B1 Battle Droids that disembarked began murdering everyone in sight.

It all seemed very pointless, but then most of what happened in war did.

If the Separatists had been acting logically, Galen would have just kept his family in their home. There was no reason for the droids to go through every residential building and kill everyone they met there. Except that the Separatists’ tactics had changed, and so the old strategies had become outdated. Except Galen hadn’t predicted this, so there were no new strategies to spare.

“Galen,” said Lyra, at his shoulder, joining him on the terrace staring out at the devastation. “We should leave.”

Galen shook his head. “There is nowhere for us to go.”

“I have spent the past three months spelunking in a cave system a few kilometers from here and the past four weeks stockpiling food and supplies in a cavern a few hundred meters in. There is a forest nearby; we can hunt and scavenge as necessary with little trouble. If we have to wait out the rest of the war living in Lokori’s wilderness, then at least we’ll be living.” Galen turned and stared at her. Lyra stared back. “If you think for a second, Galen Erso, that I haven’t lived every moment of my life since Jyn was born planning for the worst-case scenario, then you haven’t been paying attention.”

Galen thought back to his failures on Vallt. “Should we… is there anyone you…”

But Lyra was already sadly shaking her head. “Galen, half of the city is on fire and droids are killing everyone who goes near the main roads. No. We’re going.”

\--*--

It would have been an excellent plan had the Separatists not already barred the gates. Even then it might have been alright if Galen had also spent the last three months spelunking, but he was forever fated to be the least athletic person he knew. While Lyra easily scaled the wall in her climbing gear and towed Jyn up after her, Galen was not similarly familiar with the equipment and they had only one set besides. He had barely managed to put it on properly before he heard the heavy tread of battle droids at his back, at which point Galen locked eyes with Lyra on top of the wall and said the only word he could think of to save his family. “Go.”

Whether or not Lyra would have actually gone was a question that went forever unanswered, because while Galen stared up into his wife’s eyes, wanting them to be the last thing he ever saw, Lyra broke eye contact after two seconds to look behind him. “Galen. They’re not moving.”

\--*--

“For a pacifist, you seem to find yourself in a lot of trouble.” Orson mostly sounded amused as Galen walked out of the hangar bay, but the tightness around his eyes betrayed him. Galen was still feeling a bit numb himself, but even so he didn’t resist as Orson pulled him into a hug, Orson’s breath shuddering unevenly near his ear. “You kriffing bastard, I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”

Galen felt himself relaxing into it much faster than he usually did. It took him a few seconds to realize that Orson wasn’t the only one who had been shaking. He sometimes had difficulty recognizing his own mental state absent physical cues, but it had been a long, stressful few weeks. The sudden lack of tension in his muscles was almost painful in its relief, and so for a long moment he closed his eyes and let himself realize that he was finally safe.

Orson let him go, suddenly, in that way he had when he was suddenly overly conscious of his behavior, though he didn’t release Galen entirely, keeping a death grip on Galen’s right shoulder as he surveyed the spaceport. The tension around his eyes was gone, however, and it said something to Orson’s state of mind that his smile even looked genuine when Lyra also walked out of the hangar bay a few minutes after Galen, for all that his hold on Galen’s shoulder remained. “Hello, Lyra.”

Lyra nodded at him, towing Jyn in her wake. She mostly held her stress at the corners of her mouth, but unlike Orson she still visibly retained it. Galen didn’t blame her; the war might have been over, but the Jedi were dead, and she had taken the news of their betrayal harder than most. “Orson. Thank you for letting us stay in your home for a few days.”

“No problem at all. I’m hardly there except for late evenings anyway, so you should have plenty of space and time while you search for a new apartment.”

Galen had visited Orson’s home a few times in the weeks before his departure to Lokori. Despite being quite sizable for a Coruscanti flat, it technically only had one bedroom, but Orson had converted his office temporarily into a second, shoving his drafting table and his desk into a far corner and making the new centerpiece of the room a large bed, with a small cot in the opposite corner for Jyn.

“You couldn’t possibly have owned a spare bedroom set before,” said Galen. Their ship had landed late, and Lyra and Jyn were already fast asleep. Galen, however, was too restless to yet consider retiring for the evening, and so he and Orson had stayed up in the living room, Orson pouring them some brandy in the kitchen.

“Of course not,” said Orson, handing Galen his glass before sitting down on his left. “And you’ll be taking all of it with you once you leave; I have nowhere to store it, and it’s not like I have a need for a second bed.”

Galen smiled a little. “Not expecting any other overnight guests?”

“None that would make use of a spare bedroom,” said Orson.

Galen felt himself blush, inadvertently, and he looked down at his glass. Orson had learned discretion sometime in the gap between Galen’s completion of his doctorate and Orson’s own graduation from the Program, to the point that Galen sometimes had to remind himself that just because Orson no longer spoke about his love life with Galen did not mean he no longer had one. Galen sipped his brandy mostly just to do something with his hands, only registering the taste once he had already swallowed. His eyebrows raised towards his hairline. “I thought you said you didn’t have a shelf of this stored in your liquor cabinet.”

“The first bottle never made it into my liquor cabinet, if you’ll recall, and by no definition is ‘two’ a shelf.” Orson drank out of his own glass, humming with satisfaction. “You have ruined me for lesser spirits,” said Orson, half to the glass and half to Galen. “I can’t drink cheap liquor anymore, it’s horrible.”

“I hope you can at least drink cheaper than _this_ ,” said Galen, taking another small sip and making a point this time of savoring the flavor. They had finished off the original bottle in Galen’s apartment a few days after the Futures Program reunion, and Orson hadn’t seemed to have any problem at the time breaking out some of Galen’s distinctly inferior Hosnian whisky while Galen made them both caf for impromptu cocktails.

“Of course I can,” said Orson, “I would never survive half of the parties I go to otherwise.”

The parties Orson had dragged Galen to before he married Lyra had practically been defined by terrible alcohol. The fact that Orson had since attended any that served alcohol comparable to this was nearly enough to make Galen feel envious before he remembered how much he hated parties. “Only half?”

“ _Anyway_ ,” said Orson, not even trying to disguise the dodge, “This is a different brandy from last time. Last time it was apology brandy. This time it’s celebrating your unlikely survival brandy. Different vintage entirely.”

“I am willing to drink to my own survival,” Galen said, deliberately overly solemn in such a way he knew Orson would catch, and took a long drink. It wasn’t until he had finished the glass off and was well into his second, however, that he relaxed enough to admit, “I really thought I was going to die there.”

At his side, Orson stilled. “... Yeah?”

Galen nodded, staring into his brandy. “Three more seconds. That is all it would have taken. They weren’t taking prisoners. They were there to kill everybody. Why they didn’t just bomb Fullcalpa from orbit I don’t know.”

“Fullcalpa has a number of factories that produce expensive ship components, and they aren’t centralized in one district. I imagine the Separatists feared damaging the merchandise. They were running low on resources.”

Galen felt his mouth twist. “They managed to murder a quarter of Fullcalpa’s populace before their droids shut down. Over one million sentient beings, dead in an hour. All because of ship components.”

Orson shrugged. Galen distantly noted that it didn’t seem like his shoulder had gotten any better. “All wars are about resources in the end. Who has them, and who does not. The basis of the Confederation’s secession was over-taxation; Dooku’s speeches might have revolved around corruption and injustice, but the Confederation made its priorities clear when it made its main financial backer the Trade Federation. The Confederation thought that being part of the Republic was costing them more monetarily than it was benefiting them. The bulk of their combatants were droids; for them, the entire war was an investment strategy that happened to fail. Of course they cared more about ship components than people.”

“... You say that like poverty isn’t a real concern on some Republic worlds.” It was the Galactic Empire as of a few days ago, per Palpatine’s decree, but Galen was having a difficult time making the mental adjustment.

Apparently Orson was as well, because he didn’t even seem to notice Galen’s slip. “Of course it is. But the resources that might have gone towards combating _that_ problem were instead wasted on this war, and in the end we are worse off than we were three years ago. Nearly six billion dead, the Jedi fallen, and the infrastructure of hundreds of worlds completely annihilated, which we don’t nearly have the money to fix. If the Confederation really wanted to make things better, they chose a short-sighted way to go about it.”

Orson wasn’t wrong. But at the same time, “Many of the planets that seceded _did_ bring their concerns to the Senate first, but that accomplished nothing. Many of the senators are known to be corrupt, and their role as representatives of their constituents is illusory. When people are given no reasonable alternatives-”

“They slaughter civilians over ship components. Their actions are inexcusable. The Confederation’s leaders are dead, and the galaxy is better off without them.”

It took actual effort for Galen not to recoil. Orson was many things, but cold had never been one of them. Now, however, Orson’s voice was so laced with ice that Galen half-expected to see words frost the air. That didn’t stop Galen from replying, however. “Desperation causes many to do things they might not-”

“Stop it! They tried to _murder_ you, Galen! You said as much yourself! Stop defending them!” And like that, the ice was gone, vaporized in the face of Orson’s fury.

“The war wasn’t one-sided!” Most everyone Galen knew spoke to his equanimity, his calm. Strange how that seemed to evaporate whenever he was around Orson. He had been back on Coruscant less than two hours and they were already shouting at each other. He didn’t even remember rising to his feet. “The Republic committed its own share of atrocities! What they did to Vallt-”

“I don’t care!” This time Galen did flinch back, stunned, but Orson wasn’t done, his jaw set and his teeth bared. “I would have gladly seen every one of their worlds incinerated if it meant this war was finally over. A third of the soldiers in my company were wiped out on Ryloth. I was field-promoted to lieutenant-commander because my commanding officer was shot dead less than a meter to my left before we were done retaking the planet. Over _half_ of my battalion was killed by artillery on Murkhana. I may have been shot more than once and had my leg blown off, but if that was all the war took from me, I would have counted myself lucky. At least I’m a soldier. At least I _signed up_ for this, unhappy as you were about it.

“But you? You’re a civilian. You won’t even learn how to shoot a blaster, for love of the Force. Yet you have lived on three planets during the past two years, and _every single one_ was either attacked or overtaken by the Separatists. And I’ve not been there, not once. I just get to hear after the fact about how you’d been taken hostage, or had half your block leveled by a crashed Republic ship, or been nearly _shot in the face by battle droids_. You were living in the Republic’s capital and you _still_ nearly died. You didn’t like _me_ in danger? How do you think _I_ felt?” There was a cracking sound, but Galen couldn’t identify its point of origin and Orson didn’t seem to notice. “You should have been safe, but you _never were_. If the Separatists had actually managed to kill you, I-” Orson ran a hand down his face. “I don’t-”

Galen had trouble bearing the entirety of Orson’s attention at the best of times. Meeting Orson’s eyes when his friend stopped bothering to hide behind his habitual façade of affability felt like nothing so much as staring into the heart of an imploding star. Distantly, he was thankful for the fact that the military had gifted Orson with an apartment with good soundproofing, or maybe just the fact that both Lyra and Jyn could sleep through a hurricane. If there was ever a poor time to be interrupted, it was now. “Orson, you…” And then he noticed that the liquid dripping onto the carpet was not entirely spilled brandy. “You’ve hurt yourself.”

Orson looked disinterestedly down at the hand that had been holding his glass and was now holding its pieces, blood trickling from between his fingers. “… Damn it.”

Orson had never kept his med kit anywhere but under the bathroom sink, so Galen located it and was back in the living room before Orson had even sat back down; Galen shoved him into his seat before kneeling and getting to work prying open his fist. The base of the glass was largely intact, but there were two larger shards embedded in Orson’s palm and many smaller ones lodged in his fingers. It didn’t look like any serious damage had been done, nothing worth bacta, but the cuts still had the possibility of going septic unless they were dealt with.

Retrieving the tweezers and starting to pull the glass out of Orson’s hand was bizarrely nostalgic. Galen glanced up at Orson’s face, which was still set in uncharacteristic blankness even as more blood welled up in his upturned palm due to Galen’s ministrations. “Remember when you punched a mirror?”

“No.”

Galen ran his thumb over the back of Orson’s knuckles, feeling the uneven texture. “No? You still have the scars from it.” While Orson’s face had somehow survived all of his various misadventures untouched, the same could not be said of his hands. Orson had started wearing gloves in public shortly after joining the Engineering Corps, and Galen had never figured out whether it would hurt or help to tell how unnecessary it seemed, how anyone who mattered wouldn’t care. Orson had always paid more attention than him to other people’s opinions, and considering their relative positions now, Galen couldn’t say he had been wrong.

Orson just shook his head. “I remember waking up the next morning with my hand wrapped in bandages.”

“That would have been me,” said Galen dryly, returning to pulling out fragments of glass. “I was also the one who poured all of your liquor down the drain.” Seventeen had, for whatever reason, been a very difficult age for Orson, for all that their teachers had never seemed to notice.

“I figured that one out when you threatened to force me into counseling if you caught me drinking again before finals,” said Orson, equally dry, though at least now his face registered amusement instead of that disturbing disaffection.

Galen examined Orson’s hand one last time before wiping it over with antiseptic. He didn’t bother issuing a warning—Orson had mocked him the one time Galen had tried being considerate in that way—but he was still careful not to rub too hard. Orson had done enough damage to himself without Galen adding to it. “The war is over.”

“For now.” Something in Orson’s expression had hollowed out again, but he still managed a smile when Galen looked at him. “It isn’t like the Separatist planets are going to stop being angry just because their leaders are dead. I give it five years before their common sense loses out and they’re screaming for independence again.”

Galen pulled out a roll of bandages. “Maybe the Senate could try actually addressing their concerns for once instead of just pretending the situation is not of their own making.”

Orson winced then, as he hadn’t when Galen administered the antiseptic. “Do me a favor and don’t say things like that in public, alright? It makes you sound like you _were_ a collaborator, and you aren’t very popular right now as it is.”

“The Separatists were angry for a reason,” Galen argued, wrapping the bandages tightly around Orson’s hand before securing them with some tape. “Until we fix the problems that caused them to secede to begin with, you said it yourself: it’s just going to happen again.”

“As I also said, we don’t even have the money to fix _ourselves_. It’s more likely we’re going to try and stave off another war by draining them of _their_ resources through reparations and use that to rebuild what the war destroyed. The populace would never accept leniency after all they have been through.” Orson flexed his hand carefully before smiling at him, equally carefully. “Not everyone is as forgiving as you.”

Galen stood back up and dumped the shattered remains of the glass in the trash before wiping off the tweezers and putting the med kit back in order. “Would infinite resources then lead to the end of war, or just create unending war?”

Orson rose again himself and made his way over the kitchen cabinets, ignoring Galen’s warning stare as grabbed another glass and poured himself some more brandy. “Not really in the mood for a philosophical argument right now.”

Galen looked out the window, which granted a fairly spectacular (albeit limited) view of the Senate District. The sector was in the midst of heavy reconstruction—still easily visible even late at night thanks to constant ambient lighting—a mixture of the usual delicate luxury with new, harsher edges. Galen had at one point borrowed a few books on architecture in order to better understand Orson’s unending portfolios of sketches; from what he could recall of what he read, Orson was drawing upon at least some medieval Kuati influences in his designs, a distinct break from the graceful lines and interesting geometric shapes Orson favored when given free reign. In Galen’s opinion, the change was not an improvement to Coruscant’s skyline, but he knew better than to say so to Orson. “My question isn’t theoretical. If I continued my work-”

“Your theoretical work? The work thus far grounded in no empirical data whatsoever.” Galen remained silent. Orson knew Galen’s research better than some crystallographers, and the coup of Vallt had happened at the latest stages of Galen’s investigation into kyber synthetic stabilization, before he had managed to actually test any of the practicalities. It had felt extremely promising, but Orson was right; intuition wasn’t data. “You’ll never get funding for it, not even from the Institute. Your reputation has suffered too much.”

Galen pushed his glass against his forehead, for once wishing he didn’t drink his brandy neat. “But there is no better time than now.” He sounded plaintive even to his own ears.

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Orson snapped. “Your research could change the fundamental underpinnings of our economy, of- of _society_ , and for that very reason, no one will ever fund you again. People would be too afraid of what you would do with the knowledge once you got it. You aren’t trusted enough, and there’s a decent chance you never will be.”

“It doesn’t have to be me,” said Galen, ignoring the twinge at the thought. “You have my research notes. Some other crystallographer could-”

Orson laughed. It was an ugly sound. “Do you think others aren’t already trying? The research team that’s been assembled is massive, and I was nearly drafted into the whole bloody thing because I was the only one who could decipher what the void your notes were even getting at. They’ve made less progress in eight months than you did in two with your tiny team of Valltii, and that’s even with- fuck.” He cut himself off to take a long drink of his brandy. “Now I deserve to be court martialed, because the Force knows you don’t have the clearance to know _anything_ of what I just said.”

“Military researchers?” Galen asked, already knowing the answer.

Orson stared at him. “You know, sometimes how much you hate the military feels a bit like a referendum on my character.”

“It’s not the _military_ ,” Galen said, though it was, a little. He had only ever reconciled himself to Orson joining the navy because Orson had angled from the beginning for the Engineering Corps. “I just find the government’s motivations opaque. At least when I work for corporations I know what they want from me.”

“The Supreme Chanc- the _Emperor_ , is a great man. He has been pushing for peace and stability from the beginning.” Orson pointed a finger at him. “You _voted_ for him, as I recall. Every time.”

“One man can’t offset the corruption of the Senate and its apathy towards its constituents.”

“The government is the only entity funding kyber crystal energy research right now.” Orson drained the last of his glass. “They’ve made next to no progress, but at least they’re doing _something_. Verpen Industries has been formally dissolved, and you won’t find another company out there that can afford that kind of foresight when they’re all scrambling to not go bankrupt. So who knows whether or not that research of yours will lead to the end of all war? At the rate it’s going, we’ll be dead of old age before we find out, if the next uprising doesn’t kill us first.”

It was the bleakness in Orson’s voice that finally did it, the certainty that this was not the end. The bleakness, and Galen’s own memories, of Orson always returning to him more damaged than he was before, of Galen knowing there was a good chance one day Orson would never come back at all. Of having his wife and child ripped away from him on Vallt, their lives in the hands of a bitter, fanatical military dictatorship. Of watching ships burn in the atmospheres of Coruscant and Lokori. Of staring down the guns of battle droids, knowing Lyra and Jyn would watch him die. Of his own helplessness in a galaxy of seemingly unending war, because at some point he had decided that principle was more important than people. Than those he loved.

 “… Orson?”

Orson was halfway done pouring himself a fourth glance of brandy when he glanced up at Galen. “Yes?”

“Your offer. Does it still stand?”

\--*--

There was a facility for Project Celestial Power on Coruscant. Galen wasn’t entirely sure why he was appointed the leader of the kyber energy research team when he was its newest member, but the fact that the project had hired him at all spoke to Orson’s powers of persuasion.

He and Orson did not work together—Orson still looked forward to more than half a year leading the restoration of Coruscant and his work was offplanet besides—but it was still a relief to have a friend with whom he could discuss his research. He had signed so many nondisclosure agreements that he couldn’t even tell Lyra where his laboratory was located, and while his new coworkers were painstakingly polite, the few he knew from before did not include anyone with whom he would ever share confidences.

It was at the very end of Orson’s assignment that he came over to Galen and Lyra’s home one evening for dinner and arrived wearing his full dress uniform, which Galen hadn’t seen him in since the Futures Program reunion. There was something very expectant about Orson’s expression as Galen greeted him in the doorway, and Galen mentally scrambled to see if he had forgotten something. He glanced down at the two bottles of wine occupying Orson’s hands. “Should I… take those from you?”

Orson rolled his eyes and didn’t hand over the wine. “You can’t even tell, can you.”

“No,” admitted Galen.

Orson sighed loudly and slipped past him, their shoulders brushing in passing. “Lyra, hello! Congratulations on your contract.”

“Hello Orson,” Lyra said, pleasantly enough—she was leaving in the morning for Alpinn, and that had put her in the best mood she had been in since the end of the war—though her eyes actually lit up as he held out the bottles for her inspection. “Alderaanian sparkling wine and port! You shouldn’t have…” Galen watched as her eyes caught on the left of Orson’s chest and she momentarily trailed off before pursing her lips disapprovingly at Orson. “Seems like we’ll be celebrating more than one thing tonight. You should have told us, I would have made Galen get you something.”

“ _Thank_ you,” said Orson emphatically, glancing at Galen over his shoulder. “At least one of you can read navy rank insignia.”

“Congratulations,” said Galen easily; it was easy to recognize when Orson was actually upset about something and when he was just being dramatic, and this was definitely the latter.

“This isn’t even the best news, actually,” said Orson, placing the wine on the table with a flourish. “I’ve also been appointed chief engineer of an important project, one I’ve been working on for quite some time. I can’t give any details, of course,” he said, glancing significantly at Lyra, “But there have been some major design flaws since the beginning that I’ve been just _itching_ to fix—you wouldn’t believe some of the problems that have been overlooked—and now I’m finally in a position to deal with them. Such a relief, you don’t even know.”

Galen thought back to his own arrogant, inept supervisor during his brief tenure at Helical HyperCom. “I think I can sympathize.”

\--*--

They spent most of the meal discussing Lyra’s scouting prospects in Alpinn’s network of crystal caves, as she was the only one at the table who could talk about her work with any sort of frankness. Jyn had been fed earlier in the evening and sent off to bed, but she wandered out halfway through their dessert course, rubbing her eyes.

Lyra stood up immediately. “Jyn, what are you doing awake, sweetie?”

“I smelled chocolate,” Jyn said solemnly. “May I have some?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Galen saw Orson frown at the sight of Jyn—Orson was rather notoriously uncomfortable around children, having grown up in a small family, and Galen could only hope he was one of those people that got better with them once they were a little older—first in irritation, then in surprise. “Is that…?”

Galen looked at his daughter, in the process of being picked up by Lyra, then at the toy she was holding under one arm. “The Stormtrooper doll you sent for her birthday last month? She won’t put it down, actually.”

The corner of Orson’s mouth twitched. Galen had half-suspected upon receiving it that it had been meant partially as a joke gift, but Jyn, for whatever reason, had fallen in love with the thing upon first sight, and Orson and Lyra had both decided Jyn was a little young for a speech about the flaws of the military-industrial complex. “… I see.” Then he looked at Jyn, who was sitting in Lyra’s lap and carefully excavating the remnants of her ramekin of chocolate soufflé. “Do you want to be a soldier when you grow up?” When Jyn looked at him quizzically, Orson gestured at her doll. “Like him, I mean.”

“His name is Stormie,” Jyn informed Orson, with a gravity that her daycare instructor had told Galen was unusual for her age. “And I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up yet. I haven’t ruled out any possibilities.” She examined her spoon for a moment before sticking out her tongue and licking into the bowl of it.

Orson blinked at her. “… Very wise.”

Galen was briefly overcome by the urge to grin uncontrollably, and barely managed to restrain it in time, knowing Orson would think he was laughing at his expense. “She is currently reading a book about star formation.”

“Some of them are kyber in the middle,” Jyn said. She put the spoon down and looked up at her mother. “I’m done now.”

Lyra had been watching the proceedings with a strange look, but at Jyn’s proclamation her expression smoothed out and she placed Jyn back on the floor. “Well then, you’d best get off to bed. We have an early start tomorrow. Do you need anything?”

Jyn shook her head. “No.” She paused, visibly thinking. “The chocolate was good. Thank you.” Then she walked back to her room, closing the door behind her.

Orson’s expression was nearly as strange as Lyra’s. “… How old is your daughter again?”

Lyra answered him, her eyes wary. She had been sensitive to potential slights against Jyn ever since their return to Coruscant from Vallt and the unpleasantness that continued until they left for Lokori. “Four.”

“Are most four-year-olds that well-spoken, or is she exceptional?”

Lyra visibly relaxed. “Well, all parents think their children extraordinary, of course, but most human children Jyn’s age don’t begin reading on their own for another year or two. Jyn started nearly a year ago.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” Orson murmured. Then he glanced at Galen with a grin. “If she likes the doll that much, I-”

“No,” said Lyra and Galen simultaneously.

“We really don’t need her carting around two of those,” said Galen.

\--*--

Lyra went to bed soon afterwards, due to leave for her expedition with Jyn before dawn, so Galen and Orson sat out on the balcony alone, each of them holding a glass of port and staring at the sky. Light pollution meant the stars weren’t actually visible, but it was a remarkable sight, nonetheless.

“I’m sorry,” Orson said after a few minutes of peaceful silence. “I can’t actually drink this, it’s terrible, I have no idea why Lyra likes this. I feel like I’m drinking a liquefied Starblossom pie that’s started going bad.”

“Oh thank the Force,” said Galen, relieved. He had never minded sparkling wine much, but there was a cloying sweetness to port that always made him want to gag a little. “I’ll just…” he took Orson’s port and ducked back inside to dump the contents of both their glasses into the sink, returning to his chair feeling oddly accomplished.

Orson took one look at his expression and started to laugh, repressing it poorly enough that it came out as a slightly deranged giggle. “Don’t have any brandy, do you?”

“None that you’d drink.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Orson, leaning back in his chair. “I think my standards have lowered considerably in the past twenty minutes.”

“It cost me ten credits,” said Galen.

“… Alright, so not _that_ low.”

“That’s what I thought.” The silence returned for a time, but eventually Galen’s curiosity overtook him. “So what is it?” When Orson glanced at him quizzically, Galen clarified, “The project you’ve been placed in charge of.”

Orson pursed his lips slightly. “You don’t have the clearance to know that any more than Lyra does, unfortunately.” Galen must have looked disappointed, because Orson’s expression softened a little and he said, “I _can_ tell you the position comes with a cape, though.”

Galen tried to imagine this. The vision wasn’t flattering. “Is it at least optional?”

Orson narrowed his eyes at him. “It’s antistatic and water repellant.”

“That might be a compelling argument for wearing it if it were a jacket.”

Orson had obvious trouble coming up with a counter to this, though his face set stubbornly. “I have never take fashion advice from a man who wears nothing but earth tones and I never will.”

Galen tried not to roll his eyes, though he was fairly sure he failed. “As you like.”

\--*--

Orson was already getting ready to leave when Galen got up the courage to ask, “So how long do you think you’ll be gone?”

Orson stared at him blankly for a second before he broke out in a grin. “Damn, I thought I told you. I’m not. Permanently, anyway. I’ll still be offplanet probably a third of the year to personally oversee the more delicate stages of construction, but as chief engineer I’m stationed on Coruscant.” He threw an arm around Galen’s shoulders and pulled him tight against him. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for a while.”

“Too bad, I was hoping for some peace and quiet,” said Galen, but he was beaming too hard for either of them to believe it.

\--*--

Galen had never thought himself capable before of ignoring hard truths, but in the end, it proved the easiest thing in the world.

Life had never been so good before. He had never dreamed it could be. Doing his life’s work—with access to real kyber crystals, no less—with administrators handling all the minutiae of bureaucracy he’d always hated. Seeing Orson near-daily, if not at the laboratories then afterwards, to discuss how his research had progressed. Making a good home for Lyra and Jyn to return to in between Lyra’s geology trips. Knowing that his research would revolutionize the galaxy such that one day, energy restrictions would no longer limit the reaches of scientific ingenuity. Being able to stare sentients like Dagio in the eye until they were the ones forced to look away; no one dared to speak against him and his family, not anymore.

It had been Lyra to enlighten him, in the end.

It had been out of their apartment, one evening less than a week after the second anniversary of the end of the war. Lyra had insisted on eating out, leaving Jyn in the care of a neighbor, which was unusual but not such that Galen took much note of it. The restaurant was new to Galen but not bad, and Galen was in the middle of inhaling his bowl of fish stew—the only thing he had eaten all day was a Muja-fruit muffin Orson had forced on him about an hour after he should have taken a break for lunch—when Lyra asked, quietly, “Did Orson ever tell you what his project was?”

Galen had to take a moment to swallow before looking at his wife reproachfully. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

Lyra shook her head. “Galen, I don’t want you to tell me what Orson has been working on. I want to know if _you_ know.”

Involuntarily, Galen felt his hackles rise up. “What does it matter?”

Lyra’s eyes darted around. No one was paying attention to them, of course, safely ensconced in their private corner alcove, but the fact that she looked did nothing to abate Galen’s unease. “You know that I have some friends on Jedha.”

“I do,” said Galen shortly. He had empathized at first with Lyra’s grief over the fall of the Jedi, but over time her fixation had begun to grate. She spoke of them with longing, as the peacekeepers and sages of the stories, but Galen remembered other things: How they had rebuffed every one of his requests for access to kyber crystals, hoarding them and their potential entirely for themselves such that he’d had to make do for over a decade with inferior synthetics. How easily they had taken to violence, first to war and then to the attempted overthrow of the lawfully elected Supreme Chancellor of the Republic. Their end had been a tragedy, but one of their own making, yet Lyra still remained an adherent to the philosophies of peace and oneness that the Jedi themselves had cast aside so easily. Admirable, in some ways, if she hadn’t insisted on remaining in contact with those who felt similarly and seemed to feed each other’s fantasies about a Jedi Order the likes of which they had never actually seen. Like the former Guardians on Jedha, who had introduced her to others with different but equally dangerous delusions about an ideal galaxy that had been unjustly torn from them.

The Empire was not perfect, but Galen remembered the Republic well, and it had been no better.

If Lyra noticed the danger in Galen’s tone, she gave no sign. “They have witnesses who say that the explosion on Malpaz that wrecked the atmosphere wasn’t due an attack from a Separatist cell like it was reported. That it was the Empire.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Galen retorted, his dinner souring in his stomach. “Malpaz is an Imperial planet. And what does that have to do with anything?”

“Orson visited Malpaz only a few days before the explosion,” said Lyra. “And was in the sector during the strange distortion detected near the Hero Twins a few months later.

“You don’t know what he’s doing, Galen.”

“Neither do you,” said Galen coldly.

For the first time that evening, Lyra really looked at him instead of scanning for imagined surveillance. “You’re upset.”

Galen was very careful to take in and release a deep breath before replying, “I know you don’t always get along with Orson, but I thought this kind of behavior was beneath you. You are trying to accuse him of something, and you won’t even do it outright.”

Something in Lyra’s eyes hardened. “What is the Empire doing with your research, Galen?”

He and Orson had visited the experimental facility powered by kyber crystals on Kartoosh just two months previous. There had still been some problems with inconsistent power outlay, but the fact that, as Orson put it, ‘nothing had exploded’ meant they had been there to celebrate its success instead of mourn its failure. They had been off Coruscant for ten days, and he had not thought about Lyra once. “You know I can’t tell you that either.”

“You’ve changed,” said Lyra, like it was a revelation. Like she had the right to be surprised when they had spent so much of the past few years apart.

“Such is the nature of things,” Galen replied.

\--*--

Galen knew that Lyra was trying to drive a wedge between him and Orson, for whatever reason, and so he avoided home entirely over the next week. He felt bad about inadvertently punishing his daughter for his wife’s behavior, but Jyn by that point was accustomed to long periods of separation between them, and she would not be bothered by the loss.

Still, Lyra’s words nagged at him, which he resented. She hadn’t even said anything concrete, but he still caught himself staring at Orson at odd moments, wondering what he was hiding. Which was ridiculous; of course Orson was keeping things from him. They both worked in a top-secret military installation doing cutting-edge research, and Orson had a much higher level of security clearance. These facts had always been clear to Galen, and they had never made him question whether or not to trust Orson before.

He wasn’t sure whether it was his innate curiosity or that nagging feeling that led to him asking Orson out to lunch at the end of the week. Orson’s ongoing (“And futile,” Orson would always add, for all that never seemed to stop him) quest to make Galen eat on a regular basis meant Orson never even questioned it, for all there was a convenient cafeteria within the facility and the closest restaurant was over half an hour away by speeder; he just grinned and grabbed his keys.

They didn’t even end up at a proper restaurant, as Galen mentioned he didn’t have anything particular in mind; the temperate forest section of Oa Park was only twenty minutes from the installation and attracted a number of street food vendors. Even without the park’s atmospheric generators, the weather was sunny and bright, which led to Galen squinting as soon as he stepped out of the speeder, wishing that he hadn’t lost his only pair of glareshades on Lokori (or that it had ever occurred to him to replace them). The food vendors were located conveniently close to the parking lot, so before long Galen found himself sitting next to Orson on a park bench in front of a Duros glass art installation a few minutes’ stroll into the park, picking at a Gizka melt while Orson steadily worked his way through three Dao-ben steamed buns.

Galen didn’t work up the nerve to say anything until Orson finished with his third bun and was wondering aloud if there was a Fringi spice cake vendor within walking distance. “You know I don’t eat that stuff very often, but is such a nice day, it feels like it would be a bit of a waste to return to work immediately.” Orson turned and smirked at him. “I feel like it is my duty to get you at least a _little_ sun exposure before you banish yourself back to your laboratory again. Without vitamin supplements, sometimes I think-”

Galen finally gave up his melt as a lost cause and placed it down on the bench. “Orson.” He didn’t particular want to cut Orson off, but he could feel himself weakening; the temptation to accept that, at least between him and Orson, everything was as it should be was ever-present, and it was only strengthened the longer he sat there and let Orson’s easy rambling lull his doubts back to sleep. “I need to ask you something.”

Orson blinked, obviously nonplussed. “… Alright.”

“I…” It was difficult to look at Orson, but Galen forced himself to anyway. Orson was a skilled liar, but he had some subtle physical tells, and Galen knew them all. “What is the Empire using my research for?”

If asked later (though no one would ever ask), Galen would not have said that Orson flinched. He didn’t. Nothing so dramatic as that. But his pupils dilated and his right hand flexed slightly, and for Galen that was enough. “You know what your research is being used for.”

Galen nearly opened his mouth to ask what else _besides_ the experimental facility on Kartoosh—to point out the Empire must have some other long-term plans—but then he looked into Orson’s flat eyes and he finally allowed himself to see what his heart had been denying for so long.

In retrospect….

In retrospect, he should have known all along. Orson had given him all the pieces to put it together himself. That they were being funded by the military. That Orson’s projects had lost some measure of priority once the Republic had secured their victory over the Separatists, but still remained shrouded under so many levels of secrecy that Galen didn’t know what Orson’s projects _were_. That Galen’s energy research was tied to Orson’s own work, and Galen had needed to sign so many nondisclosure agreements that he couldn’t tell his own wife any details what he was doing. That even though the war was won, the Emperor wouldn’t stop talking about _peace_ , about _security_ , as though they was something that had not yet been achieved.

Galen was not an idiot, even if he had spent several years acting like one.

A single _Imperator_ -class Star Destroyer was over a kilometer and a half long and could lay waste to entire cities. Nothing else in the galaxy could remotely compare, and the Empire already had hundreds in operation, with thousands more in the process of being built.

What kind of weapon could have energy requirements that exceeded those of a Star Destroyer? That exceeded the capabilities of traditional power sources entirely? What possible _need_ could there be for such a weapon?

 _Stop thinking around it. Not_ a _weapon. Likely_ many _weapons, and at least one of them is Orson’s. The weapons he made_ yours, _too, and you refused to see it._

There was no air. He was standing outside, under the sun, and there was no air.

“Galen…? Galen!” Orson was suddenly in front of him, though crouched a few meters back. “Breathe in. Slowly. You’ve got to concentrate on your breathing.”

Orson had been there for him during many, many panic attacks in the past. His voice, his steady gaze, sometimes they’d felt like the only thing that had let Galen survive the many struggles his early adulthood, allowed him to function as an actual person, let him know that his anxiety didn’t have to hold him back, that he could work through it and wasn’t weaker for having it.

For all he may have joked to Lyra about Orson being a source of stress, Orson had never been the _cause_ of a panic attack before. Orson had dragged him to several too-loud too-crowded parties, a number of excruciating networking conferences, one ill-fated concert, but then Orson had always been a comfort, a bedrock, after the first time always listening when Galen told him that he wanted to leave.

Except now that Galen’s brain was working again, it wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t unsee it, the ramifications of what his work would mean for the Imperial war machine. _His_ work. His _life’s_ work, meant for greater things. The end of inequality, of suffering; realities forged out of nothing but his dreams and kyber. To ensure that something like the Clone Wars would never happen again, that he would never feel that _helpless_ again.

He’d thought Orson had understood. Of everyone, he’d thought _Orson_ would-

He couldn’t even look at him. He closed his eyes.

His breathing eventually evened out on its own, which was apparently the cue Orson took to stand and walk closer, the creak of his boots impossibly loud in the empty park. Galen didn’t need to be able to see him to know that he was reaching out with his left hand as he said, “Galen, are-”

“You didn’t tell me.”

Orson’s hand stilled, then dropped back to his side before it reached Galen’s shoulder, a rasp of cloth as his sleeve brushed his tunic. “About wh- you must be joking.” Orson sounded confused up until the point he deduced the direction of the conversation; then his voice went as flat as his eyes.

Galen finally steeled himself to look at Orson again. Up at him, where Orson was still standing far too close. “Do you think this is funny?”

“I think it’s ridiculous that you’re apparently angry at me for not spelling something out for you. Yes, Galen, the work you’re doing for the military is being used for military purposes. Congratulations, good job on figuring that one out.”

The sarcastic condescension in Orson’s voice rubbed against Galen’s nerves like sandpaper.  “ _Weapons_ , Orson. We’re in peacetime; billions of people and hundreds of planets are still struggling to recover from the Clone Wars… and they’re wasting me on _weapons_. Wasting _both_ of us. Your work before was _art_ , your buildings and installations the prizes of their cities. Can you say the same of what you’re doing now?”

Orson sneered at him, taking a step back in what Galen couldn’t tell was either a deliberate withdrawal or a flinch. “You want an end to war. You _told_ me that, when you agreed to come work for the Empire. I thought you finally understood that peace and security come at a cost-”

Galen shoved himself off the bench and into Orson’s space, unwilling to let Orson retreat without a fight, his nose mere centimeters from Orson’s when he asked with quiet vitriol, “Do you even know how you sound? You joined the navy as a means to an end, but now I hear you mindlessly parroting the Emperor’s party line like a _true_ believer.” The only reason Galen could insert the proper amount of venom into his voice was because he was parroting Orson in turn, late nights at the beginning of Orson’s tenure in the Engineering Corps where Orson had mercilessly mocked his starry-eyed compatriots who wanted nothing more than to make the Republic proud.

If Orson was put off by Galen’s sudden close proximity, he gave no sign, snarling back in turn, “Better a true believer than left behind in the trash. The time for your pacifism is gone, Galen. The Empire equates opposition to its grand strategy with treason. If you can’t believe in the Empire for it having given you everything you ever wanted, you’d best forget your ideals and at least remember your family.”

Galen felt his hands clench. “Do you really think this is what I wanted? Death and destruction as my legacy? You issuing threats against Lyra, against _Jyn_ -”

“I’m not threatening your child, you idiot,” Orson hissed. “I’m trying to protect you, like I’ve _always_ done. You can’t-”

“Your protection is poison.”

Orson froze, the rest of his outburst dying on his lips. “… What?”

Galen wrapped his arms around himself, whether to ward away the cold or something else, he didn’t know. “My relationship with Lyra. My life’s work. It’s all wrong now.

“It was my mistake, thinking my sacrifices were serving some greater good... instead of just allowing the Empire’s corruption to spread like a disease and contaminate everything I love. That you would be honest with me even if you weren’t with anyone else. Thinking I was _special_.” The feeling of poison in his heart was distressing mainly for how familiar it felt; Galen could be a victim and a poisoner both, for all that Orson had proven more lethal.

Orson still hadn’t moved. Still, after a moment he managed, “Galen-”

Somehow, Orson saying his name in his familiar cajoling tones was the worst sound Galen had ever heard. “Was the facility on Kartoosh even real?”

In the glare of the midday sun, it was difficult, with Orson’s eyes so flat, to tell when his pupils contracted. “Why ask a question to which you already think you have an answer?”

When Orson stepped back this time, Galen didn’t stop him, and then he was gone.

\--*--

_It was easy to leave. Suspiciously so. Galen wasn’t even sure he wanted to know how Lyra had made the acquaintance of Saw Gerrera; however, it was not wanting to know that had gotten him into trouble in the first place, so he asked anyway, but Lyra refused to say._

_“It’s best that you… don’t, Galen.”_

_Galen didn’t ask again. He had learned very well that nothing good came of insisting on answers from people who wanted the best for him._

_They didn’t take much with them, only three duffle bags between them and most of the space in those taken up by clothing. Lyra packed her favorite selection of rock samples—including the one kyber crystal she’d found on Alpinn that she’d been allowed as a personal keepsake—as well as a sheath of memory discs containing her notes. Jyn insisted on nothing but a few of her books and her Stormtrooper doll, which she refused to put down for all Lyra attempted to persuade her otherwise._

_Galen had a case full of kyber crystals lent to him by Project Celestial Power to use for the analytical work he conducted out of his home office, but Orson’s warnings lingered despite Galen’s best efforts to exorcise them, so in the end he left them all, and his research besides; even with all of Gerrera’s assurances of safety, best not to give the Empire any more reason to pursue them then it already had._

_“What about that crystal, Galen?” Galen stared at Lyra blankly, until she pointed to a spot right below his collarbone. “Won’t they miss that one?”_

_Galen’s hand reflexively rose to his chest, where he could just feel the solid warmth of the kyber from where the pendant rested under his shirt, against his skin. It had laid there so long, he had near-forgotten its existence; easy to take for granted something that was nearly a part of you. “This was never the Empire’s.” This, at least, was his, and his alone._

**Author's Note:**

> As you can probably tell from this fic and the last one, I took a number of general plot points from the _Rogue One_ prequel novel but generally refashioned them for my own purposes. My reasons for this were (1) it gave me more room to play with, (2) I still haven’t actually read the prequel novel and probably never will, so attempting to stick to that canon in totality is a fruitless endeavor, and (3) I disagree a lot with what that book apparently establishes as the canon personality of Krennic. Apparently he is supposed to be a master manipulator. That is not at all who we got in the actual movie, in which Krennic is about as subtle as a brick to the head, and I consider the movies to be the ultimate authority as far as canon is concerned.
> 
> I kind of want to send this through another round of editing already, but you can only write and rewrite the pivotal scene of a fic so many times before you hate the sight of the thing, and I've reached that point at least for the next 24 hours.


End file.
